I just did that on my trust settings for him.  I definitely don't trust his feedbacks and I'm pondering whether I should leave him a neg--he's not a scammer, but he's doing his best to ruin people's reputations without good reason and that's not cool.

For the DT members, do you think that's justified or what?  I haven't been leaving a lot of negs since the trust system changed.  I think game-protect deserves it, but I'm not sure what the standard is anymore.

I've never seen a scam accusation against Chipmixer, but it's possible I've missed any.  In any case, I'm pretty sure they're not a scam service in general and likely weren't involved in this particular transaction.  Never used their service myself but they've been in business for quite some time and have maintained a good reputation throughout--and that's a rare thing in the crypto space.  Hopefully we'll see some followup here.

Yeah, and the people in the campaign would not be advertising for them if they were scammers.  Most, if not all, of the Chipmixer campaigners wouldn't risk their own reputations if there was evidence of Chipmixer scamming anyone.

This again?  What was the thread that got deleted?  I can't see what it was about and thus can't pass any judgement on either FH or TECSHARE--but I know those two are feuding at the moment.

I think people in P&S like to argue, which makes sense, and it doesn't surprise me that TECSHARE frequents that section.  I don't understand the draw to it or other related sections like Off-Topic, since they're mostly spam (I think; I haven't visited either one of them lately).  There are lots of other discussion boards dealing with politics, so if you don't like the moderation in that one section here....find another place to talk about that stuff, maybe? 

I've read complaints about FH before, but he doesn't seem to be doing anything other than his job.  Perhaps TECSHARE will weigh in on this.

You got that right.  There are a few members who are outstanding contributors to the forum and have earned enough merits to get to Legendary once they get enough activity, but they are certainly rare cases.  Members who are just registering an account now are going to have a hell of a time just ranking up to Sr. Member.

Wow, I thought there might have been more than that but I guess it shouldn't surprise me the number is that low.

Makes me wonder if Legendary members are a dying breed, i.e., if the extinction rate is going to exceed the growth rate.  Accounts going inactive and/or getting banned leads to fewer accounts of that rank, and we know damn well that there aren't many members ranking up that high since the merit system was introduced, so....

Don't get too upset--he's not on DT and I don't think there's a chance he ever will be, plus he's proven himself to be a feedback troll so it's not likely anybody is going to take the trust that he left for you seriously.  Yes it's annoying to have something like that written on your trust page, but if you stay on the forum long enough and make yourself visible, it's going to happen sooner or later.  Think of it as a badge of honor of sorts.

Aside from all that, Theymos really ought to think about deleting obviously idiotic and maliciously-left feedback such as this.  I doubt it's going to happen, but there are some people who are blatantly abusing the trust system with spam negs.  It kind of gives the trust system a bad name when it happens.

You're probably right, but who knows.  What I do know is that members don't get banned for shitposting in general.  You have to be a chronic spammer to warrant a ban, and I don't think those get handed out all that much.

I don't find it strange that his first post was related to bounties.  That's the reason why most new members register here--I'm fairly sure of that, and you're also probably correct that the banned account is an alt of someone.  We'll see what the mods have to say if they check this thread out and chime in.  It was probably ban evasion or plagiarism of some sort.

Um...my point of view is that he's stating the obvious here, except that the long-term growth part remains to be seen.

I just wrote this about Max Keiser and Peter Schiff, that these people state these things in order to generate publicity for themselves--and it's obviously working, because we all have to hear about their crazy predictions or, in this case, a non-statement.  There's nothing significant about saying that bitcoin goes up and down and is now going up again.  I could have said the same thing without going to the media.

Seriously, and that's why I don't pay any attention to crypto news.  The only reason I'm posting about it is because OP brought it to everyone's attention, which was kind of a waste of time.

Very cool idea--it's nice to see blockchain tech being used for something other than a scammy ICO.  I'm not sure how widespread the problem of counterfeit drugs is, but the consequences of it can be dire (obviously).  I also don't know if the solution lies in using a blockchain, but it's very nice to see young folks getting into this and at least coming up with ideas to combat counterfeit medicines. 

Yeah, likely because the devs of those projects only wanted to make money for themselves and didn't really need a coin to sell in order to solve any particular problem.  I remember one a few months back that scammed its investors, though I can't recall which one it was.  They made a lot of broad claims and promises and none of it materialized. 

As to your second statement, I kind of agree.  It's been 10 years since bitcoin's blockchain was introduced and I don't think anything blockchain-related been incorporated into the medical field in any meaningful way.  That doesn't mean it'll never happen, but I wonder if it's ever going to solve any problems in medicine or any other unrelated field.

I do tend to believe him, but it's not a very hard prediction to make when bitcoin is booming like it is--people always make predictions for higher prices when the price is going up, and people like Max Keiser probably do so in order to keep their names in the news.

And in general, no, I don't listen to what folks like Keiser, Schiff, and McAffee say.  They're a bunch of zealots and if you get caught up in the BS they're selling you could get swept away in a sea of emotion.  That's what they're betting on, believe me.

Not sure if bitcoin going to $15k this week would be a good thing, either.  I think that would be a little too much of a gain.  Personally I don't own much anyway, so I've got very little skin in the game.  I'm a passive bystander and objectively I don't think $15k would hold for long if we see that price this week.  But we'll see.

Looks to me like the bull run is resuming like I figured it would.  Bitcoin had its correction after getting to $12k or whatever the price was, but it was only a dip.  The overall trend seems to be upward, and I kind of assumed that after that dip we wouldn't see bitcoin drop again--and it didn't.

I'm not sure there's any other 'why' here.  It could be related to interest rates dropping.  When that happens, prices of various investments tend to go up as more people start buying on margin....but who knows.  There doesn't have to be a concrete explanation for every price movement.  Obviously investors are buying up bitcoin again and that's good enough for me. 

More people are learning about bitcoin because it's a hell of a lot newer than the stock market is.  You can also take college courses in corporate finance (which teaches you quite a bit about the stock market) or other related subjects, whereas there aren't bitcoin-related courses on university campuses all over the world.  Thus people have to use the internet to learn about bitcoin and many do so on their own.

Don't draw big conclusions based on Google data, especially about bitcoin.  It isn't like bitcoin is overtaking stocks as the investment of choice for people with money--it's not. 

Word, that's why I don't use the Mycelium wallet anymore--and I haven't used a blockchain.info wallet in years.  I think that might have been one of the first ones I ever used and I do recall there was an issue with the fees.  Or it could have been that I didn't understand it enough at the time.

Not a chance these days if an exchange wants or has to be legit.  I don't do any trading, so I won't be using the Pit, but I wouldn't want to be a guinea pig for a new crypto exchange anyway.  I've been around long enough to see too many of them run away with their customers' funds, no matter how legitimate they seemed.  Lots of luck to anyone who does try them out.

Yeah, and we all know why that is, right?  It's because of signature campaigns and bounties, which I assume the other forums OP listed don't have.  Even if bitcoin is going to the moon, there's only so much that can be said about it at any given time--unless you're motivated by money to talk about something.  I joined the Dash forum a while back, and I found it to be pretty dead even though Dash's price was doing just fine.

That would actually be reason #2 in my mind why bitcointalk beats all other crypto forums.  This is kind of where it all began...but I still think it's the bounties and everything else that keeps the traffic coming, not loyalty to Satoshi.

I know this thread is a bit old and I'm not sure why it was bumped, but holy crap--I thought Warren Buffett 'only' had $60 billion or so.  He's much richer than I thought.

Don't know if Satoshi Nakamoto is actually a single person, and I highly doubt it, but wouldn't his bitcoin holdings put him somewhere in the list of the wealthiest people in the world?  Can't remember for the life of me how much bitcoin is his, but I remember it being worth a ton of fiat money when the price was around $400.

Yeah, the Saudi royal family is famously wealthy, and they've got to be very high on the list.  Don't know much about the Rothschilds except for all the conspiracy theories I've heard over the years.  That wealth represents a lot of individuals though.  That's why I have great respect for Warren Buffett--he pretty much earned all that money by his own hard work over the years.  It also helps that he's lived a very long life so far.

LOL.  They certainly won't earn any merits with the garbage they spew, but their accounts are fully able to get and receive them from any other means.

OP, I'm curious as to why you're asking this.  The answer is no, there's not an option to have an account with merits disabled but I'm not sure why in the world you'd want something like that.

That's the only way I can see it happening, and who knows, Theymos might actually do it.  Seems pretty silly to me, though.

He probably didn't mean another Speculation section, which is where all the TA crap goes.  I think he wants a child board where members talk about specific trades--and I don't think that would work.  Most members here don't talk about that sort of thing anyway, nor about personal things in general.  You're probably right that it would turn into basically a TA section.

On the other hand, it does sound interesting to me.  I actually wouldn't mind hearing about what people are trading and what they're thinking about while doing it.  I don't keep a trading journal because I'm not a trader, but I do have a journal and have written about crypto in it--but I wouldn't share that stuff on the forum. 

I could almost guarantee you it's not.  I don't think there's been a new child board added since I've been a member, and that's been over 4 years.  If anything, Theymos ought to make some sort of subsection for merits and one for ban appeals.  Those have been brought up several times and no action has ever been taken.

Hmm.  That sounds like a rational explanation, though I'm not sure how much total control the president has over changing interest rates, but I'm not naive enough to think that he doesn't have any pull with the Fed. 

Dropping interest rates now is kind of just prolonging the inevitable stock market correction or crash, and things will probably be nice and rosy for a while...until they're not.  I didn't think we were headed toward a recession, though.  The economy seems pretty good right now and has been for quite some time.  The stock market, on the other hand, is probably very overvalued at this point.  Not sure what the average P/E is, but I suspect it's high.

Well, I think most legitimate exchanges now have to implement KYC procedures, much like what happened with banks over the years.  A long time ago it was possible to do anonymous banking (at least in some countries), but if you ever want to get a checking account that bank is definitely going to need all the KYC stuff.  I think it became even more stringent in the US after 9/11 if I'm not mistaken.

As far as tokens and ICOs go, they're shady and I'm pretty sure aren't complying with any government regulations whereby they'd need documents from investors or from bounty hunters for that matter.  If anyone provides them with their dox, there's a good chance they'll end up on the dark web somewhere for sale.  I'd feel much more comfortable providing Coinbase with my identity than some ICO thing.

I don't think that's being ignored at all.  There are lots of AML practices in place for fiat transactions, and probably the biggest one (and it's self-imposed) is the fact that most people are going cashless, aside from what I mentioned about the banking industry.  Governments love that.

If you sent 0.1569BTC to an electrum wallet from a paper one, I don't see how it could have gotten stolen in the process.  Are you sure that was the amount?  Is there a residual balance in the paper wallet or something?  I'm not an expert in bitcoin by any means, but there are many of those around here and I've no doubt if you keep reading here someone will give you an answer.

Don't give that private key to anyone, though.  Only disclose public address(es) and only if you feel comfortable doing so.  

Edit:

Whoops--you already said it.

Well if it wasn't for that damn Nigerian prince scam thing that's become infamous....lol.  But seriously, there are probably as many scammers in the United States or anywhere else.  Unfortunately, it's the first thing that comes to mind when I hear about Nigeria. 

Thanks for the info, I do appreciate it.  I wasn't aware of Nigeria's oil-rich state, nor its agriculture.  I did take a single course in geography in college, but that's about it and it was years ago. 

The quick payment thing is definitely something bitcoin can do, but I just wonder if people would rather use a service like PayPal or any of the other similar payment processors that can function the same.  It's not like you can't send money around the world for a very low fee these days.  Granted, there's no anonymity with those payment methods, but that's not something everyone worries about. 

I would think that the advantage of bitcoin is that you don't have to rely on a bank account in order to send money.  That's something that PayPal does require, and I'm pretty sure other services like that do require bank accounts in order to fund them.  Don't know about Nigeria specifically, but there are a lot of unbanked people living in the world who can't send money around the world because they don't have a checking account.  Then again, if that's the case then they might not be able to buy any bitcoin in the first place.